Friday, July 25, 2014

Vinton Entertainment, Inc., the Portland animation studio run by Oscar winner Will Vinton and a partner, announced a co-production deal with Gnosis Moving Pictures for a series of animated features directed by Vinton. more over on Oregon Live

Friday, July 18, 2014

Andreas Deja posted on his blog today 'Lessons from Frank and Ollie' featuring a fantastic video from the 80's designed to promote Frank and Ollie's book The Illusion of Life. It's full of great material and their Observation lecture is awesome. Check it out here:

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

// Andy Serkis interview: 'Audiences are moved by acting, not effects'
“Two things have to be understood: the authorship of a performance happens on set with a director and other actors in a very conventional live action sense. The animation process is what happens afterwards, and the skill and artistry and the brilliant work the animators do in interpolating that performance and manifesting it on screen is an art form which is unparalleled.” Then, almost defiantly, he adds: “Acting is acting and visual effects are visual effects and it’s a marriage, but the authorship of performance - everything you watch on screen that you feel and think about a character - comes from the actor.”// Andy Serkis Vs. Visual Effects Animators: The Wrong Fight For Both Sides
"And one more thing for vfx artists: You too should stop bickering over who is the author of the performance and work with Andy Serkis — or Zoe Saldana or Jamie Bell or Ray Winstone — to get awards, even if it’s a special achievement award made up for the occasion, for a performance capture role. Because people like winning awards, and helping an actor win an award will make you more desirable for the next film that puts a big actor in a performance capture suit.
So what if nobody says your name from the podium? At least you’ll have have a great story for bartenders and reporters."

// Where Does Andy Serkis End & Animation Begin?
“It’s a tough question, because obviously Andy gives you the heart and soul of the performance, but we also come at it with creating what you see on top of it. So there’s this hybrid and I think that the Academy… is not quite clear how to honor that combination, because this a new thing where you can take the performance and separate it from the visual image of what you see, but then it all has to come back together again as though they were one and the same to start with.”

"However, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers doesn’t cover motion-capture acting in Screen Actors Guild contracts, classifying it rather as “lower-paying background work”, according to Variety. All that motion capture does, the association says, is assist animators, who ultimately produce the final performance – and there’s no way of telling how closely the final performance matches the actor’s movements. Steven Spielberg wanted his 2011 motion-capture movie The Adventures of Tintin to be considered an animated feature, but equally, when the 2006 movie Happy Feet won the Oscar for best animated feature, having employed motion capture, many animators felt the technique either disempowering or, at worst, a cheat or shortcut."

Monday, July 07, 2014

Milton Glaser is among the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States. He is best known for the I ♥ NY logo, his Bob Dylan poster, the DC bullet logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005, and the Brooklyn Brewery logo. via Wikipedia